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The Internet

InterNIC Redesign 125

Posted by CmdrTaco from the slick-commercial-interfaces dept.
Jeff Knox writes "The internic has apparently redesigned it webpage. All request to internic.net are not automatically forwarded to www.networksolutions.com. That means there no longer is the cgi-bin/whois? request, etc.. Everything is now on their blatant self promoting fancy gui website. " Anyone use the new stuff? Better? Worse? Intersting way to protect their business after they lose their monopoly status. But "The Dot Com People"? What terrible slogan. Can we be "The Dot Dot People"?
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InterNIC Redesign More

InterNIC Redesign

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  • I saw this yesterday, the homepage was different..
    It had all dot com (tm) plastered all over the place, along with a lot of 404 erros.

    Could someone explain to me why this move was made?

    I also saw a $117 price tag to domain names, but I have no idea what they switched it to now.

  • Harumph (Score:1)

    by Wee ( 17189 )
    Wow, InterNIC is a portal now. And you can even buy sportswear! Yay!

    We ought to go find the people that let the marketing bastards in on this and choke them. Enough is enough already.

    Bloody useless...

    -B

  • GUI (Score:1)

    by DrDevil ( 90608 )
    I registered a domain this morning noticing that they had changed it, i would have told you if i new it was news of substance :-)
    Its pretty much the same registration script as before, just looks a bit different, looks the same in parts though..

    Gaz
    http://members.xoom.com/gaztek
  • I've been looking for a while now on the new site...
    How in the world do you delete a domain? Where are the template forms?

    I liked the old one better.


    - Mike Hughes
  • but no- just overpriced tee-shirts
    Anyone else smell the dying throes of a bloated monopoly?
  • The /. copy for this piece is quite unclear, and needs editing.

    I've noticed the changes that Network Solutions have been moving into place, and I can't say I mind terribly-- I do all of my Domain Name registration via email. If you want to bring attention to a really deceptive practice, have a look at www.internic.com, where the unsuspecting can enjoy a 200% markup for domain name registration!

  • Well, the new interface/look does have some decent parts to it... it looks prettier :) Seriously though, some of the new features, whether they are just more easily accessed than before (so I never knew about 'em) or they're just plain new things, are decent (ie, contact usage reports, etc). But the "Dot Com People" is cheezy, as is selling "Web Addresses." They're DOMAIN NAMES! Jeez.
    ---
    Tim Wilde
    Sysadmin, Dynamic DNS Network Services
    Free Dynamic DNS aliasing.
  • Before I go into my bomb shelter...
    I took a look through their services.. Which are composed mainly of MSN services.
  • We're the Dot Com People is kind of similar to We Are The Dot in Dot Com, isn't it?

    And promoting that they have 3.4 registered domains, is that after their accidents?

  • New face, same wobbly foundations (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Looks like most of the stuff that was on the old web site is still there, or at least the same functions are. Perhaps they became nervous about losing INTERNIC.NET the other day.

    Why is it that whenever you hit an InterNIC service, you get responses from the IP your request went to as well as from a 192.168.x.x address? Misconfigured firewall? 192.168.0.0/16 is supposed to be unroutable private address space.
  • I ment million....
    i guess 3.4 million before, 3.4 now huh?

    rofl
  • That's not the real InterNIC.net site, is it ? It's satire, right ? right ??

    Some whois servers :
    America [arin.net]
    Asia Pacific [apnic.net]
    Europe [ripe.net].

    arin.net link to "rs.internic.net for domain related information" is broken :(

  • Okay, maybe I should mail Rob or someone with this... but shouldn't the title be InterNIC? And there are some other weird typos too... "no long is the cgi/whois..." should probably be "no longer"... right? The Interinc thing I can decipher, but some errors are too subtle... ?
  • Be fair- internic.com does offer more (like free DNS services). The ironic thing is that network solutions webpage now repeatedly suggests that you register all three commercial top levels .org .net .com "to protect your bussiness from speculators" with no discount- only they themselves got sucked punched the same way by internic.com!!!
  • If the site is easier to use then people will use it. As a matter of fact the feature where you can secure the .org and .net based off of a .com search is quite spiffy. This is the heart of the "upsale". And I am not sure if the latest xmas gift is going to be .com wear but when I sold fudge.com I got cool tee-shirts :)

    What it is going to come down to is advertising and pricing. By giving someone (that doesn't know any more than to follow the URL listed in a magazine advertisement) a way to:

    • secure the domain
    • reserve a web service (that $119 thing)
    • get merchandising and banner revenue right away
    they will be setting the standard that all the other registrars will have to have. These marketing relationships and infrastructure do not happen overnight. InterNIC is just raising the stakes a little more for the others playing in the same vertical market.

  • Argh (Score:2)

    by poink ( 7454 )
    I noticed today that the /cgi-bin/whois doesn't work anymore, and they also disabled the telnet whois service. Bad internic. *wham* *wham* *wham*. Bad Internic.
  • Read deeper... this includes some manner of hosting service provided by Network Solutions... it is still $70 to register a domain from them. This $119 is just regular $70 plus the $49 domain _hosting_ fee.
  • I hate any web site that doesn't resize to my screen ... at 1280x1024 it doesn't even fill half my screen, what makes them think that my screen resolution is 800x600? I don't know why these companies can't afford web designers that know what they're doing! Even /. resizes perfectly to whatever resolution I'm using, sheesh!!!

    Anyway, now that my pet peeve is out of the way at least the registration forms that I have become familiar with appear to be there and basically unchanged.

  • I didn't say it was PERFECT did I? I wanna get a $17.95 mousepad! And a T-Shirt with "www.dyndns.org" all over it! PLEASE? *BARF*
    ---
    Tim Wilde
    Sysadmin, Dynamic DNS Network Services
    Free Dynamic DNS aliasing.
  • I wonder how long before their full-blown web hosting business starts, designed to undercut everyone else on the planet.
  • There was a time when .org and .net had specific implications. (Yeah, I know, it's never been enforced much... the Seattle Mariners have been a .org since 1994, and they sure as hell are a profit-making entity... but still.) I find it really annoying that people are being *encouraged* to grab up .org, .net AND .com just to prevent anyone else from having a similar name.

    Trademark law doesn't prevent other businesses from having similar names, or from having similar addresses.

    This is just stupid. We need more TLDs to make room for all these different companies with similar names but different products, but instead, when we actually have 30 or 40 different TLDs, you're probably going to see companies told to grab all 40 of 'em, just in case someone with a similar name gets one! ARGH. And then we're back to square one.

    (Just imagine -- Disney or someone like that gets an .xxx domain name, just to prevent anyone else from getting it. :)

    I may not be a lawyer, but I have been through a trademark/domain dispute so I (unfortunately) have been through some of this. I used to have slumberland.com, now I have slumberland.org and
    slumberland.seattle.wa.us. It was a fight to get this result, believe me.

  • It isn't so much that the new design is horrible, sure the basic black on white was good but now they're just trying to make themselves look a little better. The worst part in the new content, no longer is it registering Domain Names with Web Addresses in parenthesis, it's the other way around. And I agree with a comment I've seen made here, when are they going to start hosting themselves and take all the other companies out of buisness, if/when they do that they're just ASKING for another lawsuit.
    Domain Name registration is definately headed in the wrong direction.
  • Not everything at the new NSI site is working. I have been trying to pay for a few domains I picked up by paying on-line with their 'secure payment system'. It isn't working, I keep getting errors. Hasn't been working since Friday night when they changed things over.

    You would think that before they routed everyone to their new site that they would have checked to be sure everything was working properly.

    Now my domains are going to expire and some dipshit speculator is probably going to pick them up. If they really wanted to make a difference with their services they should have done something to ban speculators. Those people need to get a life.

    I can't wait 'till there is an alternative to NSI, I have had about enough from them. They act like a US government agency.

    SONET
  • The problem with "fluid" site design is that it has the inherent ability to throw off any asthetical beauty one tries to achieve in the design. Fixed rez designing beings more of the layout advantages of print to the web. I know I hate reading lines of text that are 900+ pixels wide (ie., 600 feels much more natural). I think they should have centered it though, but then again, I hardly ever browse in fullscreen mode.
  • how about the dot heads?

    someone had to say it.

    anyhow, methinks sun is going to take a very dim view of their "dot com" slogan (regardless of its stupidity)
  • Gee, the uninformed folks out there (definately not the MEDIA, sheesh), might come to some odd conclusion about sun and nsi working together. The outcomes of that would be... interesting?

    -Chris
  • Posted by Fleeno:

    Has anyone seen their lame commercials, where they encourage morons to register domains of their names? "Get your dot com today!"
  • oh so cuuute! I wanna dot com peepul too!!!
  • Yep, the old whois is broken... however, there is a new one on NSI's new site:

    http://www.network solutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?slashdot.org [networksolutions.com]

    ...they just make you type a longer domain and an extra '/whois'.

    btw, the InterNIC sucks. Their PGP is still broken; I guess they've been too busy redesigning the site to sell some tshirts. Bah.

  • With all the cybersquatting you're gonna need to know swahili to get a domain pretty soon. Appropriate to go with that third-world two letter designation that you're gonna need also.


    It's only a few people who register thousaands of names. The first name that comes to mind is "Jerry Sumpton" - do a search on his name for more. jerry@freeview.com


    Its interesting that internic is showing that they care with a web page redesign now that THEY GOT COMPETITION.

  • It's your cybersquatting buddies doing a crack job on it.
  • (Just imagine -- Disney or someone like that gets an .xxx domain name, just to prevent anyone else from getting it. :)

    Well heck, now that you mention it...

    $ whois mybigstiffy.com

    Registrant:
    The Walt Disney Company (MYBIGSTIFFY-DOM)
    500 S. Buena Vista Street
    Burbank, CA 91521

    Domain Name: MYBIGSTIFFY.COM

    Record last updated on 14-May-98.
    Database last updated on 21-Mar-99 09:51:09 EST.

    Domain servers in listed order:

    HUEY.DISNEY.COM 204.128.192.10
    NS3.SPRINTLINK.NET 204.97.212.10
    NS2.SPRINTLINK.NET 199.2.252.10
    NOC.CERF.NET 192.153.156.22

  • censored in case any kiddies are viewing -drw

    I find it interesting that, after several failed attempts by many people to register the domain "F-CK.COM" (having been turned down by Network Solutions because of their `right to not register inappropriate domains' [see below]), the NIC turns around and registers it for themselves.


    Subj: Re: [NIC-980924.52497] F-CK.COM
    Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 00:43:41 -0400 (EDT)
    From: Domain Registration Role Account <domreg@internic.net>
    To: douglas@min.net

    The following template has been returned due to the following errors.

    ERROR: invalid item 33 <F-CK.COM>

    Network Solutions, Inc., the private corporation that provides InterNIC registration services, declines to register the domain name for which you have applied. Network Solutions has a right founded in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to refuse to register, and thereby publish, on the Internet registry of domain names words that it deems to be inappropriate. Additionally, Network Solutions' outside counsel has advised us that the Supreme Court of the United States has held that no corporation can be compelled to engage in publication which that corporation finds to be inappropriate.

    -- Flash forward.. 6 months later --

    bash-2.02$ whois f-ck.com

    Man, Mighty (MM9897) f-ck.com@SH-T.COM
    Network Solutions
    505 Huntmar Park Drive
    Herndon, VA 20170
    703-742-0400
    (etc.)

    I'll let the conspiracy theorists draw their own conclusions.

  • tomorrow on your way to lunch.

    Instead of improving their customer service, they're portalizing their site and making things much harder to find and use. I called today after I couldn't find something, sat on hold for a half hour before giving up. If they had any competitors, I'd switch in a heartbeat, but alas they don't...

  • Network Solutions makes a bundle of money on their monopoly. What I cannot understand is why they have not upgraded the SERVICES they offer.

    A New look is great, but where are things like:

    • ability to lookup what domians are assoicated with a host or contact in real time
    • domain registraion in real-time via the web?
    • Making the payment system and email based change system more robust and reliable

    I think our money should go to an upgrade in services first, not into a new UI to let them compete whenever they finally lose their monopoly.

  • I vote that we point DNS for internic.net to localhost. This is rediculous. They're using internic for their own personal profit.

    I didn't really mind that one company controlled com/net/org, but this is just rediculous!

  • Was the encouragement to "Protect your internet brand. Consider securing your dot net and dot org web addresses as well". I.e. Triple our profits, and cut the total name space by two thirds!

    Is it just me, or isn't ".org" supposed to be for non-profit organization and personal sites, and .net for network service providers?

    Then again there is /.

    I'd say that no one entity should have control over more than one TLD.
    --
  • That doesn't work anymore either. That stinks! I think I miss that the most for super quick name lookups on machines that don't have whois installed. The searching in that service was nice too.
  • It is cheaper to make things look flashy than to add more core functionality (see also MS).

    And because the general population is rather gullible, they get a better investment doing so.
  • Here's a good question... if so many people are complaining about Network Solutions' monopoly, why not create an effort to host root level domains like before? I'm sure a lot of ISP's wouldn't mind hosting a DNS on their box, to create some root servers, and voila! Or better yet, a non-profit organization held in the people's trust? Come on, the software is there, the talent is there... so why not? Back to the age of FREE DNS registration.

    If it comes from man, it will fail.
    If it comes from god, It will succeed.

  • The death of .org (Score:4)

    by Jonathan C. Patschke ( 8016 ) on Sunday March 21, 1999 @03:34PM (#1969930) Homepage

    Does anyone besides me feel a slight pang of pain when InterNIC^H^H^H^H^H^H^H... er Network Solutions advocates the commercial use of the org top-level domain? Didn't it used to be a requirement that you be a not-for-profit organization or a non-profit organization to obtain a subdomain in the org domain?

    *Sigh* I may work for an ISP, but a pox upon the mass overcommercialization of the Internet. I guess I keep hoping that the little guys will win. My company doesn't allow for-profit orgs to register subdomains in the org TLD through it, and it makes me sick that InterNIC does.

    Any hobbyists out there want to help me recreate the Internet again? It would be nice to start all over, leasing lines, etc. (funds permitting, of course... I run almost all my hobbies on junked hardware) to recreate the Internet that we have lost. Does anyone else remember when information sharing chewed up more bandwidth than spam & glitz?

    I'd give up my USR v.Everything and go back to an old courier 2400 if we could go back and prevent the commerical overtaking of this great resource. I mean, let's be honest here. ESR has even griped about this. Back then, you could pull down more information over a 2400bps shell account than you usually can over a 28.8K PPP connection because there's so much crap now.

    While I'm ranting, to hell with META tags, too. When's the last time you tried to look up something pertaining so some technical amusement and got 800+ porn ads? META should die, even before BLINK and MARQUEE

    Maybe I'm just an old fart (As far as the 'net goes... I've been on for a while, but I'm not that -old-), but I long for the days when gopher, archie, and usenet returned information, humor, and insight instead of crap, porn, marketroid glitz, and animated GIFs.


    The following sentence is true.
    The previous sentence is false.
  • Yet the amazing thing is, though Network solutions has a domain name under all three TLDs, they totally disregard the fact that they mean something. .com is commercial - they can go ahead and use it for all I care, they charge bucks for names. .net is for networks - they are after all a network. Yet .org used to be for non-profit organizations. www.networksolutions.org? they are not like any other non -profit org i ever heard of. They will continue to amaze me.
  • Unfortunately, with the mass-consumption of the net, .org had to become available sooner or later.
    I agree with the last 4 paragraphs whole-heartedly, and I've only been on the net for 5 years!

    It seems a lifetime ago when I first booted up Mozilla 0.9...

    Me? I'm just bitter some f*cking squatters took the domain I wanted a week before I got the money to set up. They apparently aren't using it right now, but I don't want to have to get in a bidding war.
    Hell, it's either that, or go for a .ca !

    Pope
  • And therefore you use telnet and type at the command line:
    C:\> telnet www.networksoultions.com 43
    you used to be able to go to the normal telnet port at internic.net, but no, they just have to insist on networksolutions.com
  • Check out my artistic interpretation [min.net] of Network Solutions logo. I know I'll be putting it on my homepage. ;>
  • Posted by iticory:

    I have just registered my first domain using their new interface. It is anti-internic.org.

    As many of you know, Network Solutions holds their rights to the generic TLDs through an agreement with the National Science Foundation. I would like everyone's help in starting a formal online petition to the NSF regarding Network Solutions.

    If anyone would like to help me with the terms of the petition, you can email me at nsfpetition@itinternet.net [mailto] or visit the website once it goes up in a couple days at http://www.anti-internic.org/ [anti-internic.org]
  • Seems ALL the forms are gone. And you can't do a whois by typing in an URL anymore -- you have to go to the home page and do a lookup, which is absolutely sorry... Can't wait till there is some other alternative...
  • Notice how everywhere on their site they refer to domain names as web addresses and nothing else? As if a domain name can point to a webpage only.
    NSI is sickening.
    When are we going to be able to use other companies to register domains? And do you all think it's going to be a big pain to try and move your registered domain from NSI to one of those other couple of companies that are going to be providing the same services?
  • Traditionally, internic.net has been WAY more than a store front for t-shirts. Obviously you've never used internic.net for anything useful. If you had, you'd know that it was full of forms and technical information. It was actually full of *useful stuff*. Now, i can buy a t-shirt that advertises NSI.


    - Mike Hughes
  • Obviously you have no idea that HTML is not a page layout language. What fixed resolution design actually does is reduce the advantages of the World Wide Web to little more than a fancy piece of paper, not bring layout advantages of print to the web. I hate sites that purport to be World Wide Web sites that are actually just Navigator and IE sites. Yes, there is a difference.
  • I work for an ISP. Our employee email addresses end in .com. Our customers' email adddresses end in .net. So I get this call from a newbie customer that he was mailing his wife from work and she wasn't getting the mails but they weren't bouncing. As it turns out her username was the same as one of our employees in an international location-his address, however, ended in the .com which our newbie thought had to be at the end of every domain.

    Now we in tech support are told to be very loud with the .NET at the end of subs' email addresses. :o)
  • First off, they changed it on a Saturday when no one was looking, except people like me who get assigned to a spam-hunter task. (Some idiot spammed our help mailbox at work.)

    Secondly, it's too hard to find what one is looking for, even for newbies who the new redesign is presumably aimed at.

    I do have to correct the previous poster-if you enter slashdot.org, for example, you get this:

    Registrant:
    Rob Malda (SLASHDOT2-DOM)
    etc. just like the old whois.
    (I picked Slashdot because, well, everyone knows who owns the domain name :o) )

    So that part of the whois is working. The whois itself has moved to http://www.networksolutions.com /cgi-bin/whois/whois [networksolutions.com]. Not as easy as rs.internic.net, but it's still there. The link to it is buried pretty deep.

    In short, whoever designed the UI for NSI should be taken out back and shot. I much prefer the IANA setup...
  • I've noticed that with some TLD's such as .CX (www.nic.cx), if you are a citizen of the respective country, you get free domain names. So why don't citizens of the US get free .US names? Why can't we start a non-profit organization to handle domain names? All they are are names in a database. I don't understand the $70/year that Internic requires. Reading through all the comments on here, almost everone agrees that the Internic pretty much sucks, and would like to see things done a different way. I support the anti-internic campaign (http://www.anti-internic.org [slashdot.org]). -Nohup
  • I've noticed that with some TLD's such as .CX (www.nic.cx), if you are a citizen of the respective country, you get free domain names. So why don't citizens of the US get free .US names? Why can't we start a non-profit organization to handle domain names? All they are are names in a database. I don't understand the $70/year that Internic requires. Reading through all the comments on here, almost everone agrees that the Internic pretty much sucks, and wPÀould like to see things done a different way. I support the anti-internic campaign (http://www.anti-internic.org [anti-internic.org]). -Nohup

  • fear? (Score:3)

    by RomulusNR ( 29439 ) on Sunday March 21, 1999 @10:57PM (#1969959) Homepage
    It does look like NS is worried about the legendary day which the rest of us are waiting for -- the appearance of a Messiah to bring the DNS system to some sort of sensibility.

    Why else would they be diversifying their range of worthless product lines so much? Consultancy? Auto search-engine adding? Um, T Shirts???

    And email hosting? This is great -- if you're too cheap to get your own leased line to host your domain, and too cheap to have someone else host it for you, you can have NS host your email. Then you can pretend you are on the Net while competition (er, in theory) can actually maintain their own updated site.

    Admittedly, it's not NS's fault that "Dot Com" have become the holy words of every net-ophyte that's come along in the past 2-3 years, but I guess some of us hoped that the veteran net orgs (like them) could have kept things a little better under control....

    [Snip extra rant about educating the stupid.]

    Regards,

  • Is it just me or does anyone els e think that the new NIC should be:

    A) Totally non-profit
    B) Totally devoid of lawyers
    C) Clueful

    Then after the current batch of registrations runs out they should take all .ORGs away from profitable companies (unfortunately that includes /.) and all .NETs from companies that have o business with them (ideally they would force all exclusively US companies to have a .USA domain but that ain't gonna happen).

    --
  • I think Network Solutions is doing the world a favor by demonstrating just why fair competition is desperately needed in the TLD world.
  • bash-2.02$ whois fuck.com
    Man, Mighty (MM9897) fuck.com@SHIT.COM
    Network Solutions
    505 Huntmar Park Drive
    Herndon, VA 20170
    703-742-0400

    Record last updated on 02-Mar-99.
    Database last updated on 21-Mar-99 09:51:09 EST.

  • Protect Your Internet Brand
    Consider securing your dot net and dot org Web Addresses as well.

    This is not only inapprotpriate, it's downright greedy and totally against what the whole purpose of .net and .org are for in the first place!!!

    Somebody shoot me now. The AlterNIC is looking better all the time.

    --


  • Just have to show my .sig here....

    --
  • You can still get basic whois queries if you don't mind the banner ads...


    Domain Check:





    DaGoodBoy
  • You can still get basic whois queries if you don't mind the banner ads...

    <FORM METHOD="post" ACTION="http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/wh ois/whois">
    Domain Check:</BR>
    <INPUT TYPE="text" SIZE="20" NAME="STRING" ><BR>
    <INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Domain Details">
    </FORM>

    DaGoodBoy
  • First, anyone can run a domain name server and put what they like into it. That takes no skill. If you can get other nameservers to point to it, preferably high up in the chain, the names you put in there will even be recognised elsewhere.

    If you want to create your own top-level domains, there is absolutely nothing to stop you.

    (And if anyone complains, well, accidents happen. You really didn't mean to enter -their- webserver name and map it to the IP address of that XXX site. Honest. It was merely a simple typing error.)

    As for the "dot dot people", surely it'd be "dot slash dot people". Hmmmm. Resembles morse, a bit. What's "slashdot" in morse, anyway?

  • I've just tried several whois queries on me SPARC,
    and snoop is showing them going to rs.internic.net.

    Don't seem broken to me...

    ----------------------------
    Dammit Jim...It's "U-N-I-X",
  • After browsing the new NSI site, and following the inet-access (list-request@inet-access.net) mailing list, it surely seems that NSI is out to steal from the ISP community. Don't believe that? See: http://www.networksolutions.com/services/ [networksolutions.com]

    Also, read the site. There is no such thing as a "domain name". There are "web addresses". Since when is the web == whole bloody Internet???

    It's funny, Donnie Barnes, myself and some others on the RedHat list were talking about being net/linux-geezers. I'm all of 26, but I remember using the Internet when there was NO web. Mark Andreesen and his pals were just a bunch of grad students who saw what some physicists in Switzerland were doing, then wrote a nifty X app to parse the stuff. That was the web. Funny, I remember domain names existing before that... :-)

    Besides, AT&T owns the rights to the word "Internic". I wonder what gives NSI the right to redirect http://www.internic.net/ [internic.net] to http://www.networksolutions.com/. I don't see AT&T giving them the right to do that.

    Also, these clowns are claiming 3.4 million domain names. Let's see.. 3.4M * $35 = $119M. These clowns have revenues of at *least* $119M, and can't even manage to keep the registry database running properly (anyone notice a week or so ago, when about half of the .(com|net|org|edu) domains dropped out of the registry (yet remained in the root servers)? $119M, and they can't even design a decent database system to warehouse the data. I dare say that I could build something fault tolerant that would handle the capacity that NSI's whois servers (oh, and try to telnet to rs.internic.net now!) currently handle, and then some for $10M - 20M. Sheesh.

    --j

  • ...and there seems to be no front end for it. You can't go to rs.internic.net/whois/ (or some equivalent page) and type the domain name into a box.
  • Clueless monkey, .US is free. US is still maintained by the IANA who has delegated most of the actual DNS away to various other organizations around the country. For instance, I maintain quite a few local city and town domains for NO cost.

  • One thing I think would put a damper on NSI and the squatters would be a simple rule: one domain name per organization. Period. No exceptions. You have multiple divisions in your company you want names for? Create 3LDs for them under your company name. Want .com and .net names? Sorry, decide which one you are. I suspect that'd take the wind out of NSI's sails, not to mention giving the domain squatters fits. Any thoughts?

  • Posted by Kirk T Brujah:

    If you strip the slashdot off of the address, (http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/who is?) it will bring you to the internic whois...
    Same functionality, only uglier.
  • The ISP's are bringing them money...Why on earth would they want kill ISP's or compete against them by investing in the infrastructure, dealing with the hasssles, only to end up competing against the very ISP's who are bringing them tons of business....for free. Perhaps thats why they are running a pretty profitable business and you're stuck here posting meaningless rants about something you don't understand.

    Christ dude, sometimes people search long and hard to find something to complain about only to find that there really is nothing there.
  • How on earth would you police something like this?
  • Posted by Kirk T Brujah:

    No, they have jacked up the prices and lowered the quality of service... Yes, I know it sucked before; but it sucks even worse now. When people use internic, the expect to be able to get work done with the least amount of teeth pulling. We don't need banner-ads and t-shirts.

    I support the AIC.
    (http://www.anti-internic.org)
  • Is it just me or is dyndns.org down about 70% of the time?

  • You'd need someone like Jon Postel, completely outside the DNS registry process and sufficiently respected as an impartial judge, who could make the final decision. And his decision would have to be final, no appeal possible. Whether that's doable or not I don't know, but I think that's the only way it could be done.

  • That's kind of a fatalistic attitude. The DNS alternatives have been "just talk" mainly because NSI was doing a sufficiently good job (or at least not a sufficiently bad job) that most people weren't terminally fed up with them. At some point NSI will push it far enough that even the most objectionable alternative will look better. And frankly, the old guard has a better chance of making an alternative work simply because they do pre-date the commercial interests.

  • Yes. Good idea....
    How do you enforce it? It may be too late for something like this, though on any new TLD's this would be a great idea. As for enforcement? Lying on a domain application should be fraud. Too many domains are registered to 'bogus' businesses.
  • While I'm ranting, to hell with META tags, too. When's the last time you tried to look up something pertaining so some technical amusement and got 800+ porn ads? META should die, even before BLINK and MARQUEE
    I think that would be a mistake. Only META KEYWORDS should be eliminated as the search engines can extract their own keywords. META DESCRIPTION serves a useful purpose but should only be used when displaying a page summary to the user (the original purpose).

    (Other than that, I don't think the internet should become hobbyist-only again but I do wish they were so quick to import the worst parts of TV and print.)

  • ...have a look at Sam Spade [samspade.org]. I think it's better anyway.
  • Perhaps if you would bother to take a moment and read the services NSI is offering, you would see that they are in *direct* competition with ISPs, as well as Internet Presence Providers.

    It makes no sense to compete witht those who bring you money, but that is *exactly* what NSI is doing.
  • whois didn't return a domain record -- that's a contact record, which came up because the email address contains the string you searched for. No one has registered the domain name that you want.

    And I also really doubt the person who belongs to that contact handle actually works for NSI. You can put anything you want in the form.
  • I think its impossible not to agree with the feelings most in here seem to be having, which extends quite far beyond NS, and that's that the Internet is going to hell, due to overcommercialization and/or trivialization of every significant protocol beside the Web.

    (Or maybe you think the problem is opportunistic chodes running fly-by-night ISPs who dont know what they're doing. Whichever, its the same cause and effect.)

    But I just want to be a pain and point out that all of this is relatively recent. I started using the net around only 7.9 Msec Unix time, and its now something like 9.2. When I started using the Internet, colleges were still using their gopherspaces and budding webspaces solely for academic research and what not, and TV commercials had not yet started containing URLs. I even remember from my BBS days an old FidoNet primer for Internet messages that stated that no form of commercialism -- even *.forsale stuff, was verboten.

    While more and more seasoned users (assuming I'm a seasoned user, which is likely scary to some) start crying foul over the growing mess we now have to deal with, we -- ALL of us -- pretty much sat by and watched it happen, either thinking that the perennial Net forces like NS would soon get it all back under control, or wondering how much money we could make off of it.

    I like the ideas that some have had that ISPs and other net sites could rebel and destroy this monstrosity through mob brute force a la RBL and UDP. But unfortunately, I'd say it's quite too late.

    Regards,

  • Actually, dyndns.org was down on Monday, March 22 for a large period of time due to first a 10 hour power outage, then severe connectivity problems. Prior to, and since, these problems we have had near 100% uptime. And this is totally off-topic.
    ---
    Tim Wilde
    Sysadmin, Dynamic DNS Network Services
    Free Dynamic DNS aliasing.

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